Stefanie Sun becomes victim of fake news again

SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/ANN) - Never take financial advice from singers, she tweets after fake article links her to scam site.

Home-grown singer Stefanie Sun is quitting showbiz to go into fintech, according to an online report.

The problem? It's fake news.

The singer has not given up on her music career, and worse, the company she is supposed to be investing in is known to be a scam to get unwitting people to part with their money.

In a tweet yesterday, the 39-year-old singer said she has "none of the mentioned assets in the article (this includes the brains to invest)".

"Please remember to never take financial advice from schemes that sound too good to be true. And also from singers. Thank you," she wrote.

An article on the website Kiwiplunge published yesterday alleges that Sun has given up singing to invest $100 million in a trading platform called Bitcoin Trader.

It also quotes Sun as saying she wants people "to achieve financial independence and not be slaves of economy crises" from a TEDx talk she had given. But she has never given such a talk.

The platform has also been denounced as a scam on several financial review sites, skimming credit card information for other uses. Other celebrities around the world have been "roped in" to give a fake endorsement of the site.

In addition, the article on the website also appears to rip off British broadcaster BBC, bearing its masthead.

Replying to Sun's clarification on the fake investment report, her husband, Mr Nadim Van Der Ros, tweeted: "The only thing we're investing in right now is our mini-cucumbers."

This is not the first time Sun has been the victim of fake news. Last year, a more macabre report about her dying while on tour went viral, prompting the star to quip on Twitter: "Oi, what's going on. I'm alive."

Last year, billionaire Peter Lim lodged two police reports after his name and images were used in online scams. The investor was concerned that some have already fallen victim to the scammers.

One scam involved a false claim that Mr Lim endorsed investments in a cryptocurrency. His spokesman said then: "Mr Lim is concerned that unsuspecting members of the public may be misled by all these false claims and suffer personal losses."

The year before Mr Lim also filed a police report against online claims that he had endorsed certain investment methods.